Disease of the Heart
by Demented Inu
Summary: Antonio suffers from a disease of the heart. Centehua hopes to be the cure. Spain/Aztec Mexico.


_Prompt: Character death_.

* * *

**1519**. **Tenochtitlan.**

Centehua was young still, or at least that's what mother Maya said to her. Azteca was young, and Azteca was beautiful, so she shouldn't be toiling with her hands wrist-deep in the water, searching out the shining golden flakes that her favorite stranger seemed to love so much. She could still remember him with sharp clarity in the back her mind; his hair lighter than her own and curling at the ends, pale skin, green eyes that held all the warmth and coldness of the seasons themselves.

But mother Maya - Nahuatl, with her own wise eyes and cracked theories that made no sense no Centehua herself - insisted that Azteca was young and should find a man of her own. Centehua supposed that she _was_ young, in a manner of speaking, at least in mentality and body. Her lungs and limbs were youthful still, and her mind was sharp, though her heart hung heavy with the weight of invisible years. Of invisible heartbreak.

That handsome foreign stranger still haunted her dreams and nightmares until she became obsessed with his return. She'd seen the signs, and it wasn't as though omens such as these were the ones Nahuatl described; no, Aztec omens almost always bore fruit of some sort. The first was the sky omen, like fire tassel or a plume, a shower of dawn light that pierced the sky like a sword. Narrow at the tip, wide at the base, and rising it the east, it reached all the way to the center of the sky as if piercing its very heart; everybody was afraid. Everybody wailed. For a whole year the omen kept returning until Maya had cried out and slapped her mouth with the palm of her hand. Centehua hadn't been scared, though, because she knew it would mean something good.

The second omen had been a fire that broke out in the house of the devil Huitzilopochtli, the house known as His Kind of Mountain, the place called the Commander's. Strangely, no arson had set the fire, and flames had licked the whole temple until it was black. The third time had been when lightning hit the temple Tzommolco when there was no heavy rain to accompany it, and the fourth was a daylight comet that fell in the east like a shower of sparks, and the fifth was when the lake had boiled with no wind to make it do so and houses had flooded.

The sixth, a woman was heard to be weeping and whispering, "_My children, already we're passing away,_" though other times she wanted to take her children away, hide them forever. The seventh, Montezuma himself was said to have seen the conquerors arriving on the backs of animals through a reflective surface. The eighth, monsters were said to have been captured, horribly deformed men with two heads on a single body, though they had vanished from their prisons long before inspection.

The omens had caused panic, uproar, riots, and of course disbelief.

One Maria Carriedo expressed the most disbelief and suspicion, though Centehua hadn't expected much else from her daughter. Nahuatl often joked that Maria was like a direct clone of her mother, with all of the attitude and inquiry and curiosity that Centehua herself possessed. She was proud of Maria, and proud of Pablo as well, even if the resemblance between her son and the boy's father was frighteningly similar at times.

Two children and still young, according to mother Maya. Shouldn't be working, shouldn't be putting herself through too much exertion - should look for a man. But she'd already found one, and didn't expect her mother to properly understand that.

Her boy was asleep in her lap, the size and shape of a human boy of three years, his head tipped back into the curves of her breasts. She smiled and stroked through his hair, the warm sunlight washing over their skin, the silence only broken by the shrill voice cutting through her serenity.

"_Mama_!"

Centehua's head jerked up, worried for a moment that something awful had happened, and saw Maria sprinting toward her on those twiggy legs of hers. Pablo jerked awake as well, startled, and glaring at his sister now as he mumbled something about trying to take a nap.

"Mama! Mama, look!" Maria shouted, jumping up and down on the balls of her bare feet. Waving it off as just childish excitement over nothing, Centehua went back to stroking Pablo's hair. "Those weird things in the sky... are they clouds?"

"Mm?" Centehua did look now, her own curiosity piqued. "What is it, darling?"

"Those things. In the sky."

Following the pointing hand, she spotted large square... sheets? Billowing in the breeze, they looked like strange white clouds that had stopped at the beach. Somehow they seemed familiar to her, but she couldn't remember from where. "I'm not sure," she answered honestly, reaching to take Maria's wrist and pull her closer. "I've never seen clouds like that before. Come closer."

But Maria simply took on a serious expression and a firm nod. "Stay here," she said with her lower lip poking out. "I'll go investigate."

Centehua cursed as Maria's wrist slipped free of her grip and the girl darted off toward the strange clouds; she pushed her son gently off of her, telling him to go find his grandmother and wait for her to return, and ran off after her daughter with her heart racing.

"Maria, stop- stop, don't-" Again and again she reached, but her daughter was fast on those small legs, surprisingly fast, and outran her. Finally Centehua cursed again, stopped behind a large shrub, watched as Maria ran directly to the men coming off the vessel. Not clouds... sails, that's what they were. Billowing white sails of a ship like the ones she had seen so long ago.

_Don't let her get captured, don't let this happen, no please, don't let this happen. Do not let this happen._

She willed her feet to move, but truly her cowardice kept her legs frozen and her eyes watching intently as the man turned to her... smiled.

Maria grinned her wide, sparkling smile up at the man and squeaked out in her child voice, "Are you a God? Are you?" Her small hands pulled at the man's coat and Centehua's heart lodged in her throat in fear.

But... but no; the man was familiar in a way, looking almost like Quetzalcoatl with eyes as green as quetzal feathers and and skin as white as-

"_Antonio_!" she heard herself practically scream, and run forward on sandaled feet and tired legs, throwing herself at her handsome stranger and letting him catch her in his strong arms.

He still smelled like the sea, despite his shorter hair now throwing her off and making him less recognizable to her than he'd once been. He was still just as beautiful, and smelled just as good, like the ocean and spices, swaying with the phantom rocking of a great ship; and his hold around her was just as strong as she remembered from when he'd bedded her so long ago.

His kiss was the same too, as he pulled her close and laced her lips with all the want she recognized. Passionately sweet.

* * *

She felt different now that he'd finally come back to see her.

So many lonely years spent longing for Spain's voice to trickle against her ears like music, yearning to keep her rapidly diminishing youth. Feeling his arms wrap around her in the night to keep her warm. Rising with him as her sunlight, bright enough to put all else to shame, kiss him good morning and let him use her body as he wished if only for those few precious hours of bliss when the children wouldn't be pleading for their parents' attention.

It was like a human family now that he had returned, almost. So close to one that she could maybe pretend. His touch was golden in the days he visited, the mornings especially valuable, as he tucked her hair behind her ear and brushed against her jaw to settle at her neck, jingling the heavy earrings that hung from her earlobes.

"You're so beautiful," Antonio told her, and she felt a warmth like Huitzilopochtli's sunshine.

At times, she heard him singing from across the yard as he taught their son how to grow his own crops. It was such a sweet sound, and though she had heard similar sounds before, she'd heard nothing quite like the sound of her lover's singing voice. It carried with it so many small details that she had once overlooked; the sweetness of flora and the darkness of maturity, singing until Centehua would laugh at him for it, rake her hands through his hair, feel so good that he was all her own.

She took his sickness from the blankets handed out amongst their people from Antonio's, made it her very own, and held her children close when they shivered with fever and rashes. She took the shattered look from Antonio's eyes by splaying herself for him when he needed to relax. She kissed him so hard that he could be blinded and not see what he'd done to her.

Antonio put her under a knife, but at first, she didn't mind it at all.

Centehua laughed at mother Maya and told her in sing-song voices that she could be happy now that her Spaniard had returned, and ignored what was said about the Spanish replacing the natives of the land. He would never do that to her, because he loved her - or at least she liked to imagine it so.

She was much happier with him in her life again, even when their temples were burnt by Spanish fire, even when he said things sometimes that made her children blink up at her with worried eyes, even when he asked her again and again to be Catholic and she, again and again, refused.

He loved her. He had to. What else had she been waiting for?

* * *

"Mama. Mama," came a quiet voice, and Centehua paused in her ritual to glance down at the child that plucked at the cloth of her top. "Mama, look."

She was grateful, at least, that her son was less demanding of her attention than her daughter was. Pablo was small and sort of quiet, and now looked up at her with enormous green eyes as he reached up and held out a flower in his fist for her.

"Wh-" Centehua blinked, knelt down a bit, and took the flower in her own hand. It was absolutely beautiful, golden with red tinging the edges of the petals, much like the fires that had been set to the sacred temples. "Thank you, darling. It's beautiful."

Pablo smiled at her when she stroked through his hair, longer now than it had been when Spain first returned. He said, "It's a dahlia. Papa taught me to plant one. It's pretty, like you."

The words touched her heart almost as much as the look in the boy's eyes, genuinely happy, and that flush to his cheeks that she knew meant he was excited to see her reaction. She hoped it was what he'd wanted, because she felt herself smile even brighter and pull him close in a warm embrace.

"_Querido_," she said with a soft laugh, using the Spanish term of endearment as she stroked through his hair again. Short, soft, like his father's. His eyes were his father's as well, and they looked up at her in such joy, such... happiness. Her heart ached and she pulled him even closer until his face was pressed into her breasts. "You didn't have to, love. You're so sweet."

At those words, Pablo grinned up at her with a brightness also frighteningly similar to Antonio's. "Sweet enough to eat?" he asked.

Initially, she didn't quite recognize her cue. She was caught up in the blinding smile and the mirror image it presented, practically a reflection of a much younger Spain. But then she felt herself smile and crept forward slowly.

"Good enough to gobble up," she growled playfully, tackling her tiny son to the ground and listening to him squeal in joy, watching as he trashed with laughter.

Just like every other time they'd played this, she bit harmlessly along his shoulders and arms, making noises of how delicious he was, tickling his stomach, still round with the fat of children, pinching his chubby little cheeks when he exploded into loud shouts of excitement.

He hit her with flailing fists and squealing giggles, and when it was over and she was sure his ribs hurt from laughing so much, they lay on the floor of the temple together, grinning.

"_Te amo_, Mama," Pablo whispered into her chest as his head pillowed there, those happy green eyes closing in contentment. Those words, too, wrung her heart, but not as much as her son's next ones, as he nuzzled into her and his little eyebrows came together in a frown.

"Don't ever leave me, Mama."

A haunting, foreboding feeling came over her, and her arm went around him to stroke along his back. Her other hand clutched the dahlia he'd planted for her until the fiery petals crumpled in her fingers.

"Never, _conetontli_. Never."

* * *

Antonio was filthy from exploring and playing with his children, but Centehua liked to think of it as the filth of ambition. She'd offered multiple times to help wash him off, but he'd told her no, that he would rather be dirty in other ways, and soon they were kissing, and soon his hands unwrapped her from the bindings of her clothes, and they had made passionate love on Centehua's bed.

The glow that settled in afterward was her favorite part. When Antonio would stroke his fingers lovingly through her hair and down the ridges of her spine, trace over tattoos and the strong bridge of her nose. She tried to be as passionate and romantic, but knew she fell short compared to those tribes that lived across the seas from herself. No, not tribes - nations. Nations, yes, of course.

The Spanish Empire in love with the Aztec Empire, or at least that's how it was when she would close her eyes and imagine it so. Pathetic, as mother Maya put it. She supposed that was probably true, but she couldn't help but believe it as she smoothed over the planes of his chest and let him pull her close.

"You're beautiful, _muñequita_," he told her. "So very beautiful," and cupped her face with his fingertips jingling the heavy gold earrings again.

Beautiful indeed.

* * *

It was like sudden bursts of hatred pouring through her when she heard the news and when Antonio stumbled into her home reeking of alcohol.

"_Besame." _His voice was a low timbre against her hair and her neck, but her legs closed to the tone, and her hands pushed at him. "_Corazon, te necesito_..."

Centehua shoved at him harder until he reeled back a few steps on his heels, and the air around them turned hot, electric hot but without the lust that so often accompanied the atmosphere. Her breath came heavy and her hands clenched into fists.

"Don't," she said, "don't. Not tonight. Not with you... like this. I can smell it all over you."

Maya had told her everything. Shaking and crying, Maya had taken up her hands and warned her of the handsome stranger who inhabited her bed at night. Centehua hadn't wanted to believe it, not any of it - but seeing Antonio now, pressing up on her like this and looking so confused at her rejection.

"What's the matter?" he asked, coming forward again, only to be blocked by her hands. "What, the alcohol? _Mariposa_, you know I'll be sober again in-"

"It's not the alcohol!" she shouted as she threw a punch at him. Just as she expected, he caught her fist in his hand and twisted until her wrist ached. "Agh- stop it, l-let me go..."

But Antonio was relentless, and instead leaned forward so the stench of booze wafted over her face with every exhale of breath from his lips. "Then what... _querida_?"

His hand brushed against her jaw before holding it tighter in his fingers, other hand combing back her hair and twisting the ends. It was sickeningly familiar until she could feel her stomach clench in protest, and she felt him touching her neck, just under her earrings, the delicately wrought goldwork chiming gently against his fingers. The beautiful, heavy jewelry even reflected in his eyes like some sort of madness, and her face flushed all the way up to her eyes.

"No," she told him, slapping him away so hard that the harsh sound of skin against skin resounded through the room. "No more. You've had enough."

Antonio's lips quirked into a smile that was almost sincere. "I can't help it, _corazon_," he told her. "It's a disease of the heart."

"How much longer?" Centehua's voice was strained with angry, bitter tears, and she held them back with the sheer force of will. "How much longer do you think I'll suffer you? How much more do you think you can steal from me?"

A laugh this time, and her heart stuttered to hear it. "There- There's nothing to steal, _Mexica_," he told her with his lips barely parting. "You're already mine, aren't you?"

* * *

_She hears him, her delightfully handsome stranger, speaking to her equally beautiful son. They're so alike, the two of them, though Pablo's voice is small and squeaks when he's upset, while Antonio merely grows more calm like a building storm when angry._

_Neither are angry now, though. She watches from a spot in the shade, on her knees with a small bowl of food that will serve as Pablo's dinner once he's finished with his lesson in gardening. Antonio hopes, he'd said, that Pablo will one day grow up to farm and be able to fend for himself. Maria will be a wonderful cook, but Pablo will be the one to provide sustenance for the family one day. Centehua sees her boy now, on his own knees, eyes alight as he looks to the _cuetlaxochitl _buried delightfully red amongst the brown earth._

_"And now we trim the buds," Antonio instructed, but Pablo hesitated, hands shaking even with the blade in hand. "Go on, _chiquito,_ it's alright."_

_"N-no," Pablo stutters softly. "If I cut it, it'll die."_

_Antonio smiles at him, and one hand rubs Pablo's back gently. "If you don't cut, it will die faster. You have to trim away the ones that don't conform; it's just like your sacrifices."_

_Pablo looks torn, and his eyes flicker from his father to the flower. "But it'll die... it worked so hard..."_

_Without a moment's hesitation, Antonio's voice softens into soothing tones. "Pablo," he whispers. "In order to gain a perfect bloom, a few buds have to be sacrificed."_

_The words hang heavily in the air, and Pablo repeats them under his breath._

_"A perfect bloom," he mutters, and then easily cuts through the stem of the sickly bud. Antonio smiles proudly, but Centehua feels sick with the words._

* * *

Centehua tried to fight back. Her strength was weakened by the grip around her wrists that held her to the wall, and harsh kiss that sealed her lips shut. She just kept thinking as he went to undo her clothes, as she kicked at his stomach and shoved with the balls of her feet, that this couldn't be happening to her.

It couldn't be happening to her, so there would be no bruises tomorrow as proof of the act, no rings around her eyes and no hoarseness to her voice from the muffled screaming.

She would be terrified if she knew how right she was.

Outside, the sun was setting and leaving the sky dark over the fields that she'd tended for him, the rows of crops meant to please him enough so he could praise her for her hard work. Rain began to fall, innocent and gray, and the shadows stretched indoors so that they draped over her expression of horror and pain.

The sword. Funny how the cold blade she'd known before felt like almost nothing now. She didn't even know it had driven through her until she found herself pinned to the wall by something other than her lover's hands. Sharp, cutting edges and a good half-foot of the point driven into the wall of her home, effectively pinning her there, and no struggles could possibly free her.

"What would your mother think?" Antonio asked her, twisting the blade and pulling a groan from the deepest part of her. Thick red blood coated the sword and her front, dripped down her long legs and stained his own clothes as well, the clothes she herself had taken such care to wash for him. "She looked at me that same way. Asked me to take care of you and our children before she died."

Centehua gave a hoarse sob, feeling icy hold and yet scorching hot all at once, and the tears slid down her face almost silently. Outside, the clap of thunder was a signal for good harvest, and it helped the earth to shake off the sleep of winter.

Seconds and minutes felt like hours to her now as she watched Antonio shove the sword deeper, and she was positive the blade had hit something vital, which must have been why there was so much blood. It pooled on the floor in inky puddles and there was a light spray of it over his face - oh, and staining those beautiful clothes...

So many days had passed by unappreciated.

Her children. They hadn't been appreciated either.

The rain tapped like fingertips on the roof and Antonio's expression was unnerving, and Centehua felt her muscles weakening, giving in even when clenching around the blade through her middle.

"L-love... our children-" A shaky breath and a struggle, pushing out those last few words like pushing out a baby in childbirth. So difficult, so painful. "-more than you... loved me."

Her muscles burned without any purpose or effort, and soon she held the hilt of the sword, held Antonio's hands in her own. His look of disgust disgusted her in turn, and she shuddered as she submitted to the wash of exhaustion that came over her body.

Outside, the rain pooled in dirty, muddy puddles, and the sound of retreating footfalls was left unheard.

* * *

_"Even if the snows of the Andes turned to gold, the Spaniard's 'disease of the heart' would still not be satisfied."  
-Inca Manco, the last of the Incas_


End file.
